After years of repeatedly criticizing CNN’s parent company for the network’s liberal bias, the National Center for Public Policy Research flipped the switch at today’s annual meeting of Time Warner investors in Burbank, California, and applauded CNN’s recent efforts to add more conservative commentators to its programming which has resulted in a ratings bonanza for the cable news company.

“CNN deserves credit for admitting its liberal bias and doing something to correct the problem,” said National Center Free Enterprise Project Director Justin Danhof, Esq. “While much of the liberal media, including the New York Times, MSNBC, ABC, ESPN, CBS, and the Washington Post all continue to deny their bias or the negative results thereof, CNN has made a deliberate effort to increase conservative voices in its airways, and that decision has paid dividends.”

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that CNN has enjoyed a ratings boom. The Journal noted that, “[a]fter years of weak ratings, the network is nipping at the heels of Fox News, the longtime ratings leader in cable news.”

CNN President Jeff Zucker attributed this ratings increase, in part, to a better balance of ideology on the network. Zucker said, “I think it was a legitimate criticism of CNN that it was a little too liberal. We have added many more middle-of-the-road conservative voices to an already strong stable of liberal voices. And I think that we are a much more-balanced network and, as a result, a much more inviting network to a segment of the audience that might not have otherwise been willing to come here.”

I am here to tell you that I now regularly watch CNN. For years, myself and many other conservatives wanted nothing to do with the network because it was quite clear that the news and opinion hosts abhorred our views on traditional values and free market principles. The change at CNN is tangible and I am not surprised that ratings are up.